


Expert in the Field

by Professor Muscovite (floramei)



Category: Pocket Monsters: Sun & Moon | Pokemon Sun & Moon Versions, Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9456884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floramei/pseuds/Professor%20Muscovite
Summary: Michael, hero of Orre, vanquisher of Cipher (for the second and apparently final time), grew up-- and grew cynical and bored. He travels to Alola and finds good company in Guzma and Team Skull... eventually. They have a rocky start, but then, who doesn't when Skull's involved? (Told in second person.)





	1. Prologue

You used to be bright and idealistic, once. How you ever managed that, in the blasted wasteland that is Orre, you're not sure.

  
You started your journey, more experienced in battle than most ten-year-olds, thanks to the virtual reality systems that were commonplace for the region-- with no wild Pokémon to speak of, well, that was the only way for the common man to have any variety. Or had you just grown used to their presence, growing up in the region's lab? 

Somehow, you think Jovi's optimistic little shit attitude helped, or at least made you disinclined to think well of anyone else who was optimistic. 

Still, when Professor Krane had been kidnapped, when Team Cipher re-emerged, you did what you had to. No one else was listening, no one else was doing anything. Adults never seemed to understand, did they? So you took action, you saved the Shadow Pokémon from their trainers, purified them. 

And kept them. 

It's not like you were going to build your team any other way, not here. 

But battling wasn't ever your passion, not really. It was a means to an end, though interesting specimens always caught your eye. And, well, maybe the snag machine that you swore you wore only for the aesthetic anymore, or maybe to be ready if Miror B. ever showed up again-- maybe it had a little more use than you claimed. 

The software and hardware both fascinated you, and you ended up devoting your studies to understanding it, how to modify-- which you did manage, what with turning off the misuse alarm trigger-- but never quite understood it enough to produce your own, a new one, let alone a better one. 

And no one wanted to hire the washed-up hero, who would both outshine them and be useless, simultaneously. Somehow. 

The solution seemed simple: go someplace no one new your name. Somewhere far, and ideally, somewhere less dry and desolate. 

Looking at the departures from Gateon Port, you noticed one destination in particular: Alola. That was about as different from Orre as you could get, wasn't it? So you were off, to brighter shores.


	2. Chapter 2

Why does exeryone want to steal Pokémon so badly?

Well... you suppose you're pot calling kettle black, here. You tell everyone the Snag Machine on your arm is a prosthetic, which is only true in the most generous definition of the term, if at all. The fancy cables are just for show, you appreciate a science fiction aesthetic, definitely. Not functional in the least, you manage to say with a straight face every time. 

In Orre, the focus on theft made sense- there were no spare Pokémon to go around, and their power in your pocket could make or break even the average businessman. Even there, though, stolen Pokémon had to be dealt with carefully, painstaking and incredibly illegal re-coding of Pokéballs necessary to prevent the storage system from recognizing the unregistered transfer- or hosting one's own storage server, and avoiding the Pokémon Centers outright.

Until Cipher created the first Snag Machine, of course.

Still, there were only two known snag machines in existence- and no one knew where Wes went. Some had claimed he pulled a Red and waited at the peak of Mount Battle, higher than the hundredth arena; some claimed he lived in the abandoned Under. Regardless, no trace was found.

Which left you with the only Snag Machine, which had even been legal, once. Oh, using it now for anything but Aura Detecting was incredibly illegal, and given Cipher's fall you hadn't seen any Shadow Pokémon for over ten years, now. But given its nature, the automatic severing of the link between Pokémon and its former ball, it's not like anyone but an eye-witness could very well prove anything.

So it seemed incredibly silly that these punks in front of you, these practical _children_ , were just demanding you to give up your Pokémon. They each only had one ball visible on their belts, but hadn't even reached for them. Did they really expect to not have to battle?

You sniffed a laugh. Given their folly, why not humor them? You'd caught a Yungoos, a Pokémon that wasn't native to the region but that you hadn't seen elsewhere, curious about it; but you hardly _cared_ for the thing, so gambling your ownership of it was hardly a risk at all.

When you handed the ball to the feminine grunt, you started to walk away - but she called after you. "Uh, hey! The rest of them too, loser!"

You turned around to look at the pair again, and raised an eyebrow. Umbreon was your oldest and strongest companion, but did lack the intimidation factor. Which was fine, being intimidating wasn't usually your style, anyway.

A devilish thought entered your mind... unfortunately, given most competitive battling stages banned the use of legendary Pokémon to put the occasional Region Savior and/or Chosen One on equal footing to average but skilled persons, you didn't tend to keep the Birds with you anymore, or even train them much. Damn.

Still, Salamence would do perfectly well, and the young thieves got the hint.

What kind of a criminal outfit was this Team Skull they claimed to be part of? How could they operate with such low standards?


	3. Chapter 3

The police officers handed you a Pokéball. "Michael Krane, is this the Pokémon that was stolen from you?" You touched the button, and a Yungoos materialized. Before handing it over, you'd spent maybe twenty minutes with the creature, so you had no real way of knowing if this was the same one or not - but you assumed it was, given the ball tracking system.

It grinned - or maybe it was just baring its teeth. It scrambled up your pants and... didn't bite. It nuzzled, even. Why the hell it wanted to do that was beyond you, but it didn't hurt the faith you'd placed in the ID system.

"Oh, yes, _thank_ you, officers," you said, though your voice was a little scratchy from disuse. Big eyes and fond petting of the Yungoos completed the act, though, so you shouldn't need to ramble on or anything.

Perhaps that was the wrong tactic. You're not a child, anymore, and while your thin frame certainly isn't hyper-masculine, it's not exactly feminine, either. On the other hand, it's not like you don't come by it honestly - Professor Krane might not be your biological father, but you lived with him long enough that you chose to take his name. Regardless, the police officers were giving you an odd look, hopefully of finding you odd rather than suspicious. You hadn't done anything illegal, so there was nothing to worry about, but you still tried to play your cards closer to the chest than that.

"Right, well, it's time to take these two in for processing-" said one of the officers, gesturing to the Team Skull grunts in handcuffs.

They were wide eyed, legitimately scared. Poor sods. "No, sir, no need for that," you said, voice as treacly sweet as you can manage. "With my precious Yungoos back to me, I don't see any need to press charges. I'm sure they've learned their lesson."

Of course, the lesson you hoped they'd learned was probably different than the one the officer would assume you'd meant.

The officer before you hesitated. "You're not required to, but it would help clean up the riff-raff to-"

"I said I _won't_ ," you reply, irritated. You'd been lucky enough not to be considered riff-raff yourself at any point, at least within Orre. Outside of the region, even the esteemed Krane was barely considered an actual Pokémon Professor, wasn't considered worthy to have research put in to discover good Starter Pokémon candidates.

Not to mention that your own fields, mechanical engineering and programming, were only considered useful if you wanted to apply that to the Pokémon battling economy - which, mostly, you didn't. Hover vehicles that could last in non-wasteland conditions, actual working cybernetic prosthetics for people and non-battle (or retired) Pokémon... the only thing that had gotten you anywhere were the pointless applications for various mobile devices, and even those got maybe a few thousand downloads compared to the giants with tens and hundreds of millions.

So you bristled just a bit when these people - these _children_ were cast aside, were considered worthless without a chance.

Of course, you couldn't show that. Sympathy for Teams tended to garner suspicion, even if none you'd heard of seemed quite as destructive and power-hungry as Team Cipher. So for now, you just grinned wide, and let the officer mumble something apologetic.

It wasn't long before you were all outside of the police station.

The male grunt approached. "Uh... Thanks, I think."

The female grunt punched him in the shoulder. "Dude, don't say that, you sound like a wuss. And anyway, I think this shithead is playing some kinda fucked up game here, just ignore him."

The smile you gave her was a lot more sincere than the one in the station, but not particularly warm. You shot her finger guns and said, "If you're gonna steal Pokémon, you really need to try harder than that."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael finally meets Guzma, and does his best to avoid open confrontation.

It was a hot day out, so you'd elected to defer climbing Mount Hokulani for a while. You were starting to get interested in the Z-Moves that, for the time being, seemed to be unique to Alola, but you hadn't felt like committing to being an official challenger. Still, it couldn't hurt to scope out these... 'Trial Sites' prior to, perhaps, someday, attempting them yourself. 

(Outright stealing the crystals necessary seemed to be quite off the table, unfortunately. Attempting to bypass the system would only make the already-powerful guardians angry; you had little doubt your team could defeat them, but it would be defeating the purpose entirely.) 

You paused for a moment, holding your ice cream cone away from you -- Blukberry flavored, you couldn't quite stomach vanilla after seeing the Vanillite line. The waffle cone at the bottom of this one was a dead giveaway that you weren't eating an errant ice sprite, but the image never quite left your head. 

Of course, it's not like you hadn't eaten other Pokémon. Once, there seemed to have been so-called "ordinary animals," dumber and less magical than Pokémon, but that was ancient history, and only conjecture. So of course you'd eaten Tauros Steak, and once even a Bouffalant Burger. You'd eaten Magikarp and Pidgey and Spoink since you left Orre. Orre itself had mostly canned goods, beans and soups and perhaps mystery-meat jerky. Even in the north of the region, at the borders where the wasteland dulled and near the oasis that was Agate, there wasn't nearly enough land for any kind of ranching. But all of that, the meat, the soup, the eggs, the milk-- it was all processed. Biting into a Pokémon that might still be  _alive_ left your stomach doing back flips. Berries tasted better, anyway.

All in all, it was a hot, slow day. Lazing in this peaceful garden, pretending you didn't notice Umbreon sneaking a lick or three of your ice cream. Hell, why not give him his own cone? So you went and paid for it, and your oldest friend was quite satisfied. 

Quite suddenly, however, several Team Skull thugs entered the park, and started... generally menacing the population, you supposed. They crowded through the gate and spread out through the park -- it had seemed like a lot at first, but once they split, it became clear there were only six of them, including the one with the odd uniform. So that must be one of the admits of this sad little operation. 

One Team Skull girl poked you on the shoulder, and you looked up at her with vague disinterest. "Yo, you gotta check it! Get your ass outta here, or we're gonna wreck it!" 

You felt like there was a better pun, somewhere, with 'your ass is grass,' but... eh. Your forte had never been wordsmithing. Instead, you just took a long, slow lick of your ice cream, staring right back at her. 

"Dude! I said--" then cut herself off. "That weird thing on your arm... You messed with us before? You're the guy, aren't you?" 

You grin up at her, then turn away to pet Umbreon. 

Instead of backing down like you thought she would, she started yelling. "Boss, boss! I know it ain't what we're here for, but it's the asshole!" She then blanched and covered her mouth for a moment, before yelling again, "Uh, I mean the jerk!" 

Welp, looks like it's time for you to go. Today is much too lazy of a day to be dealing with a crime syndicate, even if it was as pathetic as this one. 

You nearly make it out of the garden before you were surrounded by grunts... and somehow, the Regional Professor for Alola, whatever his name was-- Cuckoo? -- and some green-haired kid. Poor sods. Not that this Team would do much to them, given the grunt's concern about shouting foul language. The kid-friendly evil organization. What a lark. 

"Yo yo yo, it's mister Kukui!"  _That_ was his name. Thanks, nameless Team Skull Grunt. "Another meathead we didn't ask for, but when we're done, you'll be runnin' after!" 

A different grunt looked at the first one, and waggled a hand in the air. "Ehh, Damian, that's a slant rhyme at best. Aim higher'n that, bro." 

Those two stood back a little from the group, apparently discussing the finer qualities of impromptu rapping. Well... that was something. In the meantime, a different Grunt said, "Yo, you gonna take us all on, you little shits?" 

Kukui laughed in his face. "You gotta beat the man to be the man, son! There's--" He looked around and counted. ...They were hardly surrounded anymore, actually. The child had already taken his chance to flee, smart kid. "Three of you. Let's do this, Battle Royale style. I can take you all down in four turns!" 

While you'd been paying attention to the grunts around you and trying to make your own exit, you hadn't noticed the the man approach over the bridge until he was nearly in the fray himself. "Battle Royale? Singles not exciting enough for you, you've gotta beat down three Pokémon at once? You're stealing my lines, kid!" This white-haired man-- or at least, white-dyed hair, you can see roots showing through-- pushed his way past a grunt (unnecessarily, there was plenty of room) to put himself in Kukui's face. "The hated boss who  _beats_ you down and  _beats_ you down, and never lets up--" The villain slapped a balled fist for emphasis each time he said the word 'beat', cracking his knuckles on the last few words. "Yeah, that's  _me_. And you fuckin' know when big bad Guzma is here!" 

At this point, you were too intrigued to back away. Seriously, what kind of operation was this, that the administrators didn't even bother to mask their involvement with such illegal entities?

"And  _you_!" Guzma turned his shouting towards you now. "I hear you've been makin' trouble for my kids?" 

You tried to stifle a laugh. Well, a little, at least. 

"You wanna see what destruction looks like, you little  _shit_!?" Guzma shouted at you. "Here it is, in human form-- it's ya boy Guzma!" 

He started to reach for a Pokéball, but you pre-empted him with a dismissive wave. "Nah," you said, and turned tail. 

It took a moment, but you could hear behind you, "The fuck do you mean, 'nah,'? Come back here before I beat you down myself!" 

You think Kukui said something along the lines of, "...wonder why you never made captain?" At any rate, he seemed to have taken the challenge to battle himself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ,,,this has all gotten off to a much rockier start than I'd imagined. I swear it's gonna turn soon, haha.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of a beautiful friendship...?

You sat in the Pokémon Center Café in Tapu Village, and pondered. 

For one thing, it was nice that there were cafés built into the Centers, here in Alola. It was a nice touch, especially when it was raining and cold outside. Perhaps a little frivolous, but then perhaps the centers needed that intravenous cash injection. Arceus knows that Orre could probably have used that for their Centers. 

But that was a matter of the moment, of trivial comfort. More interesting was the abandoned thrift store, remnants from crossing one of these local legends, the Tapu. Legends were always finicky, but this was the first you could recall hearing of a legend's wrath not in ancient tomes and generations-old stories, but within living memory. Lugia had been trained at Mount Battle a little, at least, but wasn't your most experienced Pokémon; still, their moves were plenty powerful. Zapdos had at least been allowed in the coliseums in Orre, so it had the power of legend and battle knowledge to boot... Salamence and Ampharos could stay in the box for a bit. 

 _Speaking_ of entities one probably shouldn't be on the bad side of, the door to the center banged open and the Team Skull man from the day before yesterday-- Gooseman? -- walked in. 

The white-haired man made his way to the healing counter in the middle of the Center, but the... bartender? of the café groaned, and started making a drink. 

"Hey," you said, but he didn't hear you. A little louder, "Hey," and finally he noticed. "That for--?" You couldn't remember the gang leader's name, so you simply jerked a thumb backwards in the man's direction; the bartender nodded. You slid another 198P across the counter, and said, "I'm buying." 

The man blinked, shrugged, and put the money in the till. 

Sure enough, the more violent man got his Pokémon back from the nurse, and stormed his way over to the café. "You know what I fuckin' want," he said. He plunked himself onto a stool angrily, and fumbled in his pocket for a moment before slamming a wad of cash on the counter. 

So they stole Pokémon and terrorized the general public, but still paid for their sweet drinks. Granted, you were pretty sure that Team Rocket  _might_ have been able to get everything for free in their hayday, what with protection rackets and generally  _actually organized_ crime, but much less wouldn't cut it. 

"No need, Guzma" the barman said, and gestured towards you. "Already taken care of." 

Guzma looked at you, and seemed to notice your presence for the first time. "You little-- what did you do to my cocoa, huh?" 

You put your hands up in what you  _hoped_ was a clear gesture of surrender. "I don't want to fight," you said, "I'm trying to make peace." You take a moment to collect your thoughts a bit further, and add, "I just paid-- ask him," and you nodded at the-- bartender _really_ wasn't the right word, thinking of him as that had been bothering you. Cafétender? 

Either way, the man behind the counter nodded. "Dunno what ye've done t' the poor lad to get him buying you drinks, but all he wanted was to pay y'r way."

First Guzma squinted into the mug of hot cocoa, then he sniffed it. Cautiously, he tasted it -- and apparently deemed it not poisoned, for he took a long gulp. 

After that, Guzma turned his focus back to you. "Buyin' me cocoa once ain't letting you off the hook, kid." 

At that last comment, you huffed a bit in irritation, but let it pass. You needed to mend bridges enough to continue to lay low for a while. That scene in Malie Garden might have made an impression on that Professor character -- hopefully not much of one, he didn't seem the type to care much for cowards. Hopefully backing out had saved you from notable infamy... ideally. But given that perhaps foolhardy brush with the official system before that, you weren't sure how many more instances your facade could handle before someone noticed that the facts you provided never quite added up. So what you needed here was to mollify this man enough that he'd leave you alone -- or intimidate him into doing so, but with the other patrons of just the café, not to mention the actual Center and the Mart on the other side of the healing counter, that would be counter-productive. 

What came out of your mouth was "Sorry... no hard feelings." 

Guzma raised an eyebrow at you and scowled.

"I just wanted them-- the kids-- to leave me alone," you managed to continue. "Maybe also demonstrate that their tactic was awful. The cops and the Salamence were just-- trying to get them not to mess with me." 

You always sounded so much smoother in your head. 

It seemed that Guzma agreed, or at least agreed that you sounded like shit while talking. He was grinning at you, and it wasn't kind. "Team Skull gets to mess with who they want, shithead or no shithead. We wanna mess with you, we'll do so." 

That wasn't the answer you'd been hoping for, and clearly you were bad at arguing your case. Maybe you could lighten the mood? "So, uh-- you're a ghost type specialist, then? That's-- neat." 

There went an eyebrow again, though Guzma's mouth and nose scrunched up like he'd smelled something foul. "The fuck? No, I do bugs. Where'd you get that idea?" 

You blinked. "The... name. Do the grunts have Gastly, then?" 

Guzma shrugged, still frowning. "Li'l skulls have mostly whatever they bring with 'em. So like, Zubat and shit." 

"No Houndour, no Duskull, no... Frosslass? Or, what's that one bird, with a skull on its ass... Vullaby? Or, ah, that regional variant of Marowak, that's a very interesting skull, there." 

"It's a fuckin' name," Guzma said, clearly irritated. "What, you think we need to keep everything all about literal skulls? Fuck, it's an aesthetic. It's not that deep." 

You just couldn't wrap your head around it. "But  _why_? Why call yourself that if you're not going to use it? Why bother to steal Pokémon if you don't have a way to rewrite their Trainer ID? Why try to act like you're some kind of crime syndicate when you don't have the power to back it up? There's so many questions I have about all of you, I half want to show you how to do it  _right_. Any self-respecting criminal shouldn't have been caught by the ID thing, for Arceus' sake. No one's like Cipher, but you just--" 

And in the middle of your accidental monologue, you remember that you had been trying to make amends with this man. Whoops. 

Guzma's face was red, and he pounded his fist on the countertop. "You think you can fuckin'-- That's it, I'm not taking no for an answer." He started to reach for his belt, which you assumed had his Pokéballs. 

"Okay, okay,  _outside_ ," you manage quickly, before hopping down from your seat. For good measure, you unhook your partner's ball from your belt, and release Umbreon -- hopefully that would prove you're serious. 

As you walked and managed to collect your thoughts a bit, perhaps this was a better outcome. Guzma seemed to be following you, so you proceeded out of the center and to your left. There was a path leading up the mountain, blocked by construction equipment-- but the workers seemed to be done for the night. You crawled around the barricade, leading Guzma to the hopefully deserted path beyond. You'd really prefer thick forest off the path of one of the more lush regions, or the seemingly endless desert of your home-- but at least most law-abiding citizens wouldn't be here to see anything. 

There was a clearing, then a steep slope with a half-constructed elevator. It was the end of the line, but that was fine. You were far enough from the main road. 

"Thought you could run again, kid? You're backed in a corner, now you've gotta fight. Say goodbye to yo--" 

"Conditions for the battle," you say, interrupting him. "First: I only do doubles. Second: you win, you can keep my entire team, fair and square. I'll even officially Trade them to you." Umbreon looked up at you with concern. You winked at him, hoping that was enough to let him know you intended no such thing. "I win, and I--..." 

You were on a slippery slope with the law. You had managed to get the system to allow your Orre Pokémon here without beating the League -- or rather, without completing its analog, the Island Challenge. You didn't use your Pokémon to travel like apparently some foreigners tried to -- HMs were as foreign to you in Orre as they are here, only ever seen from interregional trainers -- but you still tended to go off-roading, which was inadvisable at best, potentially illegal. And of course, there was your snag machine, ever-present though hardly used-- hardly, but not never. 

You had no one who seemed to like you much aside from your Team, captured so long ago when working against Team Snagem and Team Cipher. You had no job prospects, and had traveled to Alola somewhere between hoping to find a better market and hoping to forget how worthless your life seemed to be, after saving the region-- perhaps the rest of the world, had Cipher continued to grow. 

You saw many flaws in this ridiculous Team Skull, and... for the most part, had actual solutions to most of these problems you saw. It was vile to think you'd become what you'd fought against -- but you'd lost your morals long ago, abandoned through necessity in your attempts at getting funding during grad school, though if you were honest the fallout from the Cipher ordeal was probably the start of everything. 

This all occurred to you quite quickly, but there was almost certainly still a lengthy pause. "And you fuckin' what?" Guzma finally prompted. 

"I win," you started again, "and I join this Team Skull, and have enough freedom to actually  _fix_ things." 

Guzma laughed at that. "You think we need you, kid? Little goody two-shoes coward?"

You blinked. "So long as you know you win, what's the harm in agreeing to terms you don't like?" Of course, you knew this applied more to you than to him. "You won't even be losing anything. This is literally a win-win situation for you." 

That seemed to catch his attention, at least. He seemed to consider for a moment, then grinned. "Okay, kid, you're on," and he released his first Pokémon -- a goliath of a thing, hulking arthropod with two large arms and several smaller ones, and a hunch much like its trainer's; and an Ariados. 

You smiled and released the second member of your party, Houndoom. 

Before you could say anything, Guzma shouted, "First Impression!" and the-- Golisopod, your Pokédex said-- rammed into your Umbreon, and left him pretty bruised. 

Had he been closer to the Golisopod's level, that might have done a lot of damage, or even one-shot fainted him. Super-effective, at any rate. So, bug or fighting type... probably bug, given its partner. Still, you didn't want to take chances, so replaced Umbreon with your Frosslass. You considered recalling Houndoom, but... Flamethrower on Ariados worked awfully well, and unsurprisingly one-shot fainted it. 

Guzma looked to only have two more Pokémon on his belt, so when he sent out Masquerain, you switched to Aggron -- the only Pokémon you'd ever caught from the wild, before Alola. 

Alternating Hail and Protect kept Frosslass mostly safe, with minimal damage to Aggron, tank that he was, and managed chip-away damage that straight up attacks couldn't. 

Aggron's move choice was pretty much just Iron Defense. You hoped that Guzma took the move choices as defensive strategy rather than power mis-match, you hadn't realized how tough your Pokémon had gotten from training on Mount Battle. 

Eventually, the hail knocked Golisopod past half of its health, and it took an Emergency Exit, to be replaced by Pinsir. Hm.

At about the same point, you couldn't really justify using Iron Defense anymore. It had stopped being effective a turn or so ago, but you could blame that on bad memory-- to a point. 

Iron Tail on the Pinsir and it was curtains for the poor thing, leaving Golisopod to enter the fray again. 

Frosslass protected again, and Aggron used Heavy Tail on the Golisopod, and Guzma's face visibly fell as the Pokémon fainted. 

"I'm not-- I'm still gonna beat you down, you little shit, just you watch. Goody two-shoes like you can't do shit for Skull, anyway." 

You'd been considering a plan, but Guzma's comment cemented it. And now you're glad that his last Pokémon left standing wasn't the one that seemed to be his favorite, that might have ended...poorly. 

Still. You waited for a few more turns, and Masquerain's health was very poor now from the onslaught of hail. 

You pulled an Ultra Ball out of your bag, and Guzma cocked an eyebrow at you from across the battlefield -- or at least you thought he did, it was pretty dark. 

You slotted the Ultra Ball into the pal of your left hand, in the glove of the Snag Machine. You heard a satisfying click. 

You tick on the remnants of the Aura Reader system, now just an auto-aim program; useful, given you were right-handed. 

And so you threw the Ultra Snag Ball at the Masquerain. 

The ball shook once, twice, three times. 

Click. 

Guzma was looking between the Ultra Ball lying on the ground, and the Pokéball the Masquerain had come from, on his belt, back and forth. 

You walked over to Guzma, stopping to pick up your new Pokémon's ball along the way. "I'll trade it back to you once we're back at HQ, wherever that is,  _boss_ ," you said. "Since I'm the OT now, you should even get boosted experience while training." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this... did not come out quite how I planned. I might end up rewriting it. >3>


End file.
